The Castle in the Forest

Starred review from November 6, 2006
Mailer did Jesus in The Gospel According to the Son
; now he plumbs the psyche of history's most demonic figure in this chilling fictional chronicle of Hitler's boyhood. Mailer tells the story through the eyes of Dieter, a devil tasked by Satan (usually called the Maestro) with fostering Hitler's nascent evil, but in this study of a dysfunctional 19th-century middle-class Austrian household, the real presiding spirit is Freud. Young Adolph (often called Adi) is the offspring of an incestuous marriage between a coarse, domineering civil servant and a lasciviously indulgent mom. The boy duly develops an obsession with feces, a fascination with power, a grandiose self-image and a sexually charged yen for mass slaughter (the sight of gassed or burning beehives thrills him). Dieter frets over Hitler's ego-formation while marveling at the future dictator's burning gaze, his ability to sway weak minds and the instinctive führerprinzip
that emerges when he plays war with neighborhood boys—talents furthered by Central Europe's ambient romantic nationalism. Mailer's view of evil embraces religions and metaphysics, but it's rooted in the squalid soil of toilet-training travails and perverted sexual urges. The novel sometimes feels like a psychoanalytic version of The Screwtape Letters
, but Mailer arrives at a somber, compelling portrait of a monstrous soul.

Mailer grabs your attention immediately with his main character, a devil serving high in the ranks of Satan who is present at Adolph Hitler's inception and is charged with overseeing his childhood. Mailer maintains interest with glorious writing, fastidious detailing and research, and intriguing philosophical underpinnings about the order of Hell, Heaven, and Earth. Harris Yulin's narration carries the proper authoritarian tones for the narrator, humanizing him enough to lend believability to his potential unreliability. Yulin's guttural portrayal of Hitler's licentious, bullying father sheds light on the boy's development of uncomfortable sexual practices and need for power. His tones for Hitler's mother are softer, and her indulgences further clarify confusions about feces and sibling preferences that might easily pervert a young psyche. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine